Big Change Charitable Trust

The Trust supports bold, early-stage innovations addressing root causes in education, mental health, social care, climate education, food poverty, neurodiversity, digital and enterprise skills, and leadership. Funding is directed at ideas with the potential to create systemic change for young people across England. Supported activities include seed funding for proof-of-concept projects such as peer mental health initiatives, climate anxiety programmes, school hubs, and technology for young people who are blind. The Trust challenges established models and avoids gap-filling or non-root-cause work, focusing instead on generating scalable insights for whole-system transformation.

Big Change funds registered charities and social enterprises. Its programmes support leaders aged 18-28 with ideas that could create systemic change for young people, as well as experienced leaders with bold, early-stage ideas for under-served communities. The Trust prioritises youth-led or youth-benefiting initiatives and places strong emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Applicants typically work in England, with some programmes operating across the UK. There is no religious restriction and no stated income limit, though organisations tend to be early-stage or small-to-medium in scale.

The Trust does not support established models, gap-filling projects, or initiatives that do not address root causes. It avoids complex, 'difficult-to-define' issues that mainstream philanthropy often overlooks. Exclusions are not detailed further in the sources.

Big Change makes multi-year grants and funds projects through competitive challenges or by invitation. The Trust's overheads are covered by Virgin Unite, allowing 100% of public donations to go directly to initiatives. It welcomes unsolicited applications, with details of open programmes announced on its website. The Trust favours a partnership style that embraces risk and convenes coalitions to drive systemic change.